A high degree of network reliability is important to most communications services customers and, therefore, to communications service providers. In order to assess network reliability, service providers have developed models for identifying potential risks to network reliability. Traditional network reliability models were typically designed from the perspective of equipment manufacturers, e.g., by analyzing network element hardware, firmware, and software failures. More recently, service providers have begun examining the vulnerability of communications networks to disaster events, e.g., hurricanes, floods, terrorism, and the like. In particular, service providers have developed business continuity disaster planning (BCDP) techniques for examining the vulnerability of communication networks to the disaster events.
The existing BCDP techniques use qualitative analyses to assess a communication service provider's level of disaster preparedness. For example, service provider networks and associated processes may be analyzed using on-site building inspections, questionnaires, disaster preparedness drills, and the like. In particular, using the existing BCDP techniques, service providers analyze disasters by looking for single points of failure in the network. For example, a service provider may determine that the failure of a particular network element would result in a large number of customer connections being dropped. The service provider's level of disaster preparedness is then improved by providing network redundancy for the identified single points of failure. Due to the complicated nature of both communications networks and disaster events, however, such BCDP techniques are simply not effective.
A current technique for analyzing a service provider's disaster preparedness is the Availability Environment Classifications (AECs) method proposed by the Harvard Research Group (HRG). In the AEC method, a number of server availability classes are defined. In particular, the AEC server availability classes are defined to provide indications with respect to the tolerable length of server downtime and associated server data loss. The AEC method, however, does not specify the method by which the availability class of a server or function is determined. As such, existing techniques for analyzing a service provider's network for assessing the service provider's level of disaster preparedness are inadequate.